Troubleshoot PivotTable or PivotChart view

In PivotTable view, you cannot filter based on part of the data in a cell. This feature is available in Form view or Datasheet view.

If the PivotTable view takes a long time to calculate, you can make several changes to the layout at one time and then retrieve the data when you are finished making changes.

1. Press ESC to cancel the calculation. The view then displays only the names of the fields.

2. Change the layout, adding and moving as many fields as you want.

3. To retrieve and calculate the data for the new layout, click Refresh on the PivotTable toolbar.

Expand indicators might be turned off    If you don't see the boxes to the left of items of data in row and column fields, make sure the expand indicators are turned on.

Items might not be available    When an item of data is at the lowest level, the item does not have the box beside it, even when you turn on the expand indicators.

You canceled a refresh operation. To display the data, click Refresh on the PivotTable toolbar.

When you copy data in a PivotTable view to the Clipboard and paste it into Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word, only visible rows and columns are copied. Any data that you have hidden or filtered out is not copied.

Before you copy data, turn off filtering to show all data in the PivotTable view, and display the detail data that you want copied.

To avoid having to show all the data first, you can export, rather than copy, the contents of the PivotTable view. When you export a copy of the view to Excel, all of the data is automatically included, with the same filtering in effect. You have the same access to additional fields in the underlying record source that you do in the PivotTable view, and you can change the filtering in Excel. From Excel, you can then copy data to Word or other programs. For information about working with PivotTable reports in Excel and publishing them to a Web page, see Help in Excel.

When a number is too wide to fit in a cell, the PivotTable view displays number signs instead of the number. You can fix this in any of the following ways:

• Make the column wider so that the entire number fits.

• Make the font smaller if you don't want to widen the column.

• Change the number format to one that takes up less space.

When you set the option to include all items in totals, asterisks (*) appear next to the caption of the total fields to indicate that the totals include any hidden items in addition to the displayed items.

If you want to omit data that is hidden by filtering from subtotals and grand totals, you can set an option to include only displayed data. This option also hides the asterisks.

If you cannot locate the command or option you want in the Properties dialog box, it could be because you don't have the necessary item selected in the chart. To make sure you have the correct item selected, click the General tab in the Properties dialog box, and then in the Select box, click the chart item you want to work with. Options for that chart item will then appear in the Properties dialog box.

There might not be enough room in the chart to display all of the axis labels. If some of the category names aren't visible along the category (x) axis of the chart, try the following:

• Use a smaller font size for text on the category (x) axis.

• Shorten the category names in the source data.

If your category (x) axis displays numbers such as 1, 2, 3, and 4 instead of the values you want, you might have created a line chart instead of an xy (scatter) chart. Click Chart Type on the PivotChart toolbar, and then click XY (Scatter) in the Chart type box. If you want lines to connect the data markers, click one of the subtypes that has lines.

Chart items (such as the legend, plot area, data labels, and titles) can't be moved or resized with the mouse. However, many chart items can be moved by using the Position or Placement settings on the appropriate tabs in the Properties dialog box. For example, you can rotate or flip the plot area of a chart, and you can pull out slices in pie or doughnut charts. You can also resize the font that's used in axis labels, data labels, titles, and the legend; and you can resize the data markers in some types of charts. Other chart items are resized automatically when the size of the chart changes.

You can add titles to a chart and to the axes in a chart. You can also add data labels to data markers. You can't add free-floating text to the chart.